UPPER MERION — For the last five years you could buy just about anything in King of Prussia except a car.

Not a normal car, anyway.

In the last six months you did have the option of heading to the mall and plunking down a deposit on a $70,000 high-voltage miracle on wheels.

But that all changed on Wednesday, when an auto chain that typically sells nearly half a million cars a year opened its doors on South Gulph Road.

Used-car megadealer CarMax finally got to build a beautiful big-box-style superstructure and set up shop on a property next to Home Depot that it’s owned for several years.

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With the recession that helped turn out the lights at nearby David Penske Chevrolet in 2008 now in the rear view mirror, the time was right for CarMax to debut its 129th store and roll out a few hundred low-mileage domestics and imports, all nicely broken in for their next owners.

“The recession put everything to a stop, but this is a great location for us, with everything we look for in a retail site,” said Tom Folliard, president and CEO of CarMax, Inc. for the last seven years, and one of the vital players who helped launch the company in 1993.

“Cars are kind of a destination thing, so when people want to find us they’ll find us. Going forward, Philadelphia will be a multiple store market for us. I haven’t been to King of Prussia much, but all I hear about is how congested it is and how many people shop here — and that’s good for us,” added Folliard, who lives in Virgina, moments before a grand ribbon-cutting splash got underway.

“Prior to 2008 we were planning to come to Philadelphia with multiple stores but we cut our growth, cut our expenses and went from an $8 billion to a $6 billion company in six months,” Folliard said.

A resounding comeback has landed the Fortune 500 company that began as a Circuit City spinoff squarely back in growth mode, with 10 to 15 new stores a year planned for the next three years, Folliard said.

“This year marks a milestone for CarMax, hitting $12 billion in sales for the first time.”

As the crowd — which included many of the store’s more than 40 employees, King of Prussia CarMax manager Richard Buscher, Montgomery County Commissioner Bruce Castor and several Upper Merion Supervisors — munched on hoagies, steak sandwiches and Caesar salads catered by Chive Café of Lahaska, Folliard filled everyone in on how CarMax does business.

“We’ve sold over 4 million cars, starting on a simple concept, which is to change the way consumers buy cars in America,” he said.

The CarMax way is a one-sticker-price-fits-all, no-haggle situation, accompanied by a 30-day warranty and five-day money back guarantee,

“Prices are clearly marked on the cars,” Folliard said. “We separate out each transaction — the financing, the trade-in ... some of the pieces of a traditional car transaction that are the most contentious.”

Every car shopper is made a cash offer on a trade-in, even if it’s not entirely up to snuff for the CarMax resale world, Folliard allowed.

“And that’s whether the owner buys a car from CarMax or not,” he said.

Those less-than-stellar vehicles end up at wholesale auctions, which has turned into a surprisingly prolific enterprise for the auto superstore chain, Folliard said.

“We do about $2 billion in wholesale. That’s a little known piece of our business. It’s something that we never anticipated that’s grown to be a very big piece of who we are.”

Folliard pointed out that Richmond, Va.-based CarMax is now the second largest auction chain in the U.S., and one of the top ten auto lenders.

“You can only get a CarMax Auto Finance loan at CarMax,” he said. “You can select any loan that you want; there’s never an incentive here in the store to put you in a CarMax loan over someone else’s loan.”

Castor joked with Folliard that he would look into having the Gulph Road property reassessed for taxes.

“Not only do you have the space here, but you have the access to the infrastructure necessary to support it,” Castor pointed out.

Before Wednesday’s event was over, Folliard announced that the CarMax Foundation had donated more than $100,000 to charity, including $85,000 for a new playground to be built at Philadelphia Montessori Charter School, and $10,000 to Cradles to Crayons in Conshohocken.

“Giving back to the communities in which we live and work is an important part of the CarMax culture,” Folliard said.